But China, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, North Korea—each of them is far worse. And that discrepancy is what reveals anti-Semitism: a double standard in plain sight.
I have never been an admirer of Bill Maher. I caught his act during a 2008 summer associate stint in Washington, D.C., and I found him more smug than funny. Regardless. Not my taste. Yet I was struck by his recent segment, titled “New Rule: No Jews, No News.” He makes a clear, forceful argument that contemporary discussions about “colonialism” and “genocide” amount to anti-Semitism wearing scholarly disguises. It’s also notable that the audience offered only scattered applause, with many liberals seeming unsure if laughter would be safe. Watch the full segment, or consult the transcript after the break.
Since Israel marked its birthday yesterday, having become a nation on May 14th, 1948, everyone is expected to either offer warm wishes or admit their anti-Semitism.
Now, in a free country, anyone can be anti-Semitic, but the habit of hiding behind references to Israel, Zionism, or Netanyahu has to stop.
If you share the belief, as many do today, that Israel represents the apex of human-rights violations, you either overlook the facts or ignore your own hypocrisy.
Because there are far worse places in the world. Yet we inhabit a moment where the rule seems to be: no Jews, no news.
But China, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, North Korea—all of them far worse.
And that is the tell: it’s anti-Semitism when the standard is so glaringly uneven.
People talk about Jews these days as though they belonged to the realm of Stormfront, except that it isn’t Stormfront.
It’s an editor at The American Prospect, a venerable liberal outlet that helped launch the careers of journalists like Ezra Klein.
Yet no one flinches when one of their editors proclaims, “Israel is a brainwashed, psychopathic death cult that might need to be nuked to save the human race.” Sure.
Many claim the left and the right can’t agree on much anymore. Yet there is one point of consensus: right-wing figure Tucker Carlson hosts Nick Fuentes and Holocaust deniers on his show and asks, along with them, “Who really was the bad guy in World War II?” And The New York Times features on its podcast a prominent leftist, Hasan Piker, described as “a progressive mind,” who argues Zionists “should be treated the same as Nazis,” which, in my reading, implies their execution at Nuremberg.
Is that what “progressive” means these days? I suppose so. The youngsters seem to be fully on board. They went wild at Coachella last year for Kneecap, an Irish rap group. Their stage design bore the slogan “Fuck Israel.” And they circulated a beach ball through the crowd.
Again, laughter erupts.
Because, once more, Israel is presented as the sole wrongdoer in the world. It’s easy to see why the manosphere crowd and the Code Pink activists end up on the same page; they both grew up in America and lack a broad base of knowledge.
We could very well see a not-too-distant future where tiki-torch crowds shouting “Jews will not replace us” align with Queers for Palestine to propel the next regime under Hitler’s shadow. A North Carolina teenager faces charges for allegedly intending to drive through a synagogue to realize a life goal of killing “as many Jews as possible,” a dream that begs the question of why such a notion would even occur to a young person in North Carolina.
Why would the dream belong to Dan Bilzerian, who is now running as a Republican to win a House seat in Florida? Who is Dan Bilzerian? He’s a self-styled “professional” who has amassed 30 million followers by posting provocative content all day. He would fit right into today’s Congress. Bilzerian typifies the manosphere figures when he declares that the sole real contest worth fighting in the world today is, essentially, exterminating Israel. He would sign up tomorrow to deploy troops and kill Israelis. Why does this individual’s life revolve around two things—pillars of male bravado, Viagra and the extermination of Jews?
Israel was founded on the idea that anti-Semitism made a Jewish state a necessity, because Jews would not be safe without one. Can you listen to that rhetoric and not see why it proved true? If you lack both the right-wing and progressive camps, what do you have left?
What could be more progressive than higher education, where professors now utter statements that would make Kanye West flinch? Osman Umarji describes Zionists as “bloodthirsty animals.” Who is he—leader of ISIS? No, he’s a professor at UC Irvine in California. Candace Owens concurs with his assessment, saying, “Wherever they go, they bring their filth with them.” Another professor, Hamid Dabashi, remarks on Israelis that they possess a “vulgarity of character” deeply rooted in the fabric of their culture. These are the sorts of statements Goebbels would have skimmed and said, “No notes.” Seriously, where are the Jewish space lasers when you need them?
There are, of course, equally repugnant things said about Muslims as well. That should be condemned just as forcefully, such as Republican Congressman Randy Fine declaring, “If we must choose, the easier option is not between dogs and Muslims.” That is appalling. But it isn’t the same as, “They should be nuked,” or “Let’s exterminate them.”
This is why Jewish people in the Diaspora—both here and in Europe—sometimes hide their identity, fearing that the Star of David could make them targets, as has happened far too often lately. Leave your Star of David at home. But the keffiyeh? It can be worn anywhere. You can wear it to Fiddler on the Roof and still get applause. Jew-hatred isn’t merely tolerated now; it’s fashionable. Celebrities embrace it and turn it into a trend. It’s the new Che Guevara T-shirt.
The claim that “Islamophobia is just as bad” is a false equivalence. Can you name a Jewish academic who discusses Muslims with the same intensity that some discuss Jews? The answer is no. Anti-Jewish crimes and hate crimes now outpace anti-Muslim hate crimes by about nine to one. I’m not saying we should intensify the other side; I’m simply stating the numbers, the facts, the reality.
There’s a rising, almost feverish obsession with the idea of exterminating this one group. And the Democrats—where do they stand? If any other minority were spoken about in such terms, there would be outrage, benefit concerts, and demonstrations. Yet because many of your TikTok-afflicted followers now hold a negative view of Israel, you indulge them instead of correcting them. You won’t tell your woke followers that Israel is not a colonizer or an apartheid state or committing genocide, and that if they spent a week anywhere in the Middle East besides Israel, they would grasp what liberalism should be. Many declared candidates for the presidency on the Democratic side want it publicly known they do not take money from AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, a stance that effectively grants anti-Semites the right to claim, “See? We’re right about Israel—the money comes from a dirty country.” Oh, please, you accept contributions from crypto, factory farms, and big tech, from Diddy, Weinstein, and Epstein, yet AIPAC somehow remains off-limits?
To anyone who asks, “Why are you tougher on the Democrats than before?”—until you resolve this entire issue, don’t ask me to soften my stance.
